‘Doctors Honoris Causa of UCL at BOZAR’

On February 7, the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) will present honorary degrees to three “scientific adventurers” as part of the Louvain Year of the Scientific Adventure: Eric Lander, mathematician and geneticist, Cindy Lee Van Dover, biologist and oceanographer, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, historian and leading figure in “global or connected history”. On Tuesday February 7, they will be at BOZAR as part of the UCL’s Rendez-Vous in Brussels programme where they will talk to Françoise Schein, architect, town planner and artist in residence at the UCL, about their scientific and artistic adventure; with the participation of Béatrice Delvaux, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Le Soir.

Eric Lander is an American mathematician and geneticist who lectures at MIT. He is one of the main leaders of the international consortium on the sequencing of the human genome. In 2008, Barack Obama appointed him Co-Chair of the PCAST, which brings together 21 of the best American scientists and engineers to advise the American president on science and technology. 

Cindy Lee Van Dover, American biologist and oceanographer, is a lecturer at Duke University and director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory. Having benefited from numerous research grants from American institutions such as NASA and the National Science Foundation, she is a Founding Trustee of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, which carries out in-depth research into ecosystems.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam is an Indian historian, lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and visiting professor at the Collège de France. Leading figure in global or connected history, which offers a “multipolar vision of the world”, he is also the author of Three Ways to Be Alien, which follows the fortunes of three individuals as they travel across Europe, Iran and Moghul India. 

Françoise Schein, a Belgian artist, architect and town planner, inscribes human rights on the walls of European, American and Middle-Eastern cities: on the ceilings of metro stations, the walls of underprivileged areas or the façades of arts centres. Her approach involves a combination of art, architecture and philosophy and gets residents involved in the creation of her works.